Colonel Hayward was too angry, too much bewildered and agitated, to reply. He took Joyce to the sofa, and made her sit down. ‘My dear child,’ he said, ‘you must not let yourself be intimidated—you mustn’t give way. You may be sure you are quite safe. Nobody shall bully you or put forth a false claim upon you here.’
Mrs. Hayward had not said a word all this time, her husband having unexpectedly risen to the height of the occasion. Elizabeth knew how to hold her tongue. But she intervened now with calm authority. ‘We’ve no right to say it is a false claim,’ she said, ‘till we know more about it; but you can see for yourself, Mr.—Mr. Halliday, that she is not in a state now to have it proved. Come back later; nothing can be done now. Come back in the evening, and my husband will see you finally.’
‘Finally!’ said Andrew. ‘You will see me finally, ma’am, when I take away my wife—but not till then. After that, you may be sure I will have little temptation to show myself in this house.’
The schoolmaster was roused. All that was best in him—his real love, his true independence, his sense of manhood, all came to his aid. He knew his rights and his power, and that no father could crush a lover so determined. But though he said these words with genuine and indignant feeling, the utterance of them brought another side of the question back to his mind. If it came to that—yes; he was man enough to carry his love away, herself alone, as he had wooed her for herself alone. But nobody but he knew how many glorious visions, how many hopes, would be cut off if he shook the dust from off his feet and resolved to cross that threshold no more. He would not give up Joyce, but he as good as gave up the headmastership—that dream of glory. He saw it melt away in the air, the baseless fabric of a vision. He felt himself come down, with a giddy sense of descent and failure, and become once more Andrew Halliday, schoolmaster, Comely Green. He had even perhaps a little neglected Comely Green for the sake of that too sweet, too tempting illusion. And now he must resign all thought of it, all hope. The renunciation thrilled through all his nerves, as he stood there facing the prejudiced and foolish people who did not perceive what it was they were throwing away. But even this did not shake his faith in himself and his confidence in his rights. He cast a glance which was full of compassion yet disapproval at the group on the sofa. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that Joyce is too much agitated to be responsible, and that the Cornel is excited and unable to see the rights of the situation. Therefore, ma’am, I will take your advice. It is not the reception I had a right to expect; but, nevertheless, I have full faith in Joyce when she comes to herself. I will withdraw till this evening. No ceremony, I beg,’ cried Andrew hurriedly. ‘I will find my way out—there’s no need for any one to open the door.’ Even in the midst of questions so much more serious, he remembered that it would be bitter indeed to show his discomfiture to the pampered menial who had admitted him. That at least he would not endure.
Mrs. Hayward followed him out of the room, sparing him this indignity. Perhaps the sight of Joyce leaning upon her father, absorbing his every thought, was as little agreeable to her as to Andrew. If Joyce was in trouble, it was at least her own making, whereas the innocent people whom she dragged into it had done nothing to deserve it. Mrs. Hayward regarded Andrew with angry contempt, but she was not without a certain fellow-feeling for him as a sufferer from the same cause. His air of terrible respectability, his coat, his hat, his gloves, everything about him, were so many additions to the sins of Joyce. And yet she felt herself more or less, as against Joyce, on Andrew’s side. She stood behind him while he opened the door, grimly watching all his imperfections. The back-door, she said to herself, the servants’ hall, would have been his right place. And yet, if the man spoke the truth, he was quite a fit and proper match for Joyce!
CHAPTER XXXV
From August to November the time had gone very slowly and very hardly for Joyce.
After that glowing afternoon, when she had heard from Norman Bellendean words which she could never forget, not another sign or token from him had reached her. It is not an unprecedented thing that a gap like this should happen in the midst of a love-tale. A declaration interrupted, a question unanswered, may expose any pair of lovers to such a blank. The man may be kept back by many reasons; the woman on her side cannot gather up the broken threads. Joyce, above all, had no initiative to take. He had said he would come back, but he had not come back; and thus the story of her awakened heart had seemed to close, as it began, in agitation and shame. It had been wrong to listen to him, wrong to allow the thought of him to enter into her heart. She had not intended it, she said to herself, as is always said. The strong new tide which she did not understand, the character of which she had begun to suspect too late, had carried her away. What defence could she have put up against it when she never suspected it,—when it was to her a surprise most painful, though so intoxicating? Who is there guilty of such infidelity, forsaking an old love for a new, who cannot excuse herself in such words? And of many such it is true, as with Joyce, that the first love had been a mere name, a something not understood, an acquiescence—no more. If she had sinned against Andrew in accepting the love which was true enough on his side, without any real response, it had been done without guile, with no knowledge of any harm. Joyce had been conscious that it was not the love of which her beloved poets had sung; but how could she tell? As there was no second Shakespeare, so perhaps that love of the poets had died away into something calm and poor, like the dull prose of to-day; and when the dulness about her had burst asunder like a husk, and flowers had come forth, and a blossoming and brightness indescribable, the girl, bewildered, had tried to attribute that illumination to other causes, to give it other names.
The revelation, when it came, lasted but for a moment. Before she had been able to realise the sunshine that suddenly blazed upon her life, there had as suddenly followed a blank. The bewilderment and confusion of all things, which had been great enough before, were by this brought to a climax. Norman’s declaration or half-declaration completed the cutting off of her heart and existence from every ancient tie. She dared not seek light in the chaos of her mind from any one near her. She dared not betray it to the tender ears of the old people who would not understand, to whom she could not say all. To whom could she say all?—to no one, no one on earth. She had to fall back upon herself, a creature straying about in worlds not realised. Andrew appeared to her through the mists like the vision of a nightmare, whose approach would be death. Never, even when no distraction was in her mind, when he was the most near and the most natural of all companions, had she been able to tolerate the idea of a closer union. She had vaguely looked for something to happen, to prevent any further rapprochement. She had surrounded herself with reasons why no further step should be taken. But she had never felt as now the horror of the bond which held her like iron—which she had escaped from, yet from which she never could escape. And, on the other hand, scarcely less terrible was the brighter vision which had burst upon her in one dazzling, bewildering blaze—the revelation which at first seemed to be that of Norman Bellendean’s love for her, but which soon settled into a shameful, terrible consciousness of her love for him. He had lighted up that blaze, and then he had disappeared out of her life, leaving her to contend alone with this discovery and consciousness. He had not asked for an answer from her—he had only asked to come back. And he had not come back; he had disappeared as if he had never existed, only leaving this revelation, this overturn of everything—the glory, the horror, the shame.
Joyce, it is true, had been absent for a great part of this blank period of darkness through which no word or sign of life had come. She had been taken away into new scenes, into a new world, the novelty and delight of which might have saved her had she ever remained long enough in one place to realise and understand it. But it was only to her of all her party that Switzerland was a novelty. Her father and his wife were accustomed to travel. They moved from one tourist centre to another carrying all their usual habits with them, possessing a terrible monotony of acquaintance with everything there was to do and to see. Mrs. Hayward took Mont Blanc as calmly as she did the river of which she felt her own lawn and trees to be one of the great charms. The Colonel thought more of the occasional old Indian comrade whom he would meet in one of the big noisy hotels, than of all the mysteries of the Alps.